About

Project405 is named after the 405-line television system that served Britain from 1936 to 1985. Several of the projects here are about seeing it live again: a monitor built around the VCR139A radar tube, a standards converter that turns modern video into 405 lines, and the restoration of two early-1950s Bush televisions, a TV22 and a TV12.

The rest cover the wider workshop: valve test gear, supplies for battery-era receivers, low-power transmitters for vintage sets and amateur-radio antenna accessories. The emphasis is on construction: every project is written up with schematics, parts lists and test procedures, published once it has been built and filmed.

Contact

Questions, corrections or notes from your own builds are welcome: workshop [at] project405.co.uk.

Safety

Many of these projects involve mains voltages and valve HT supplies of several hundred volts, and the television projects involve EHT of several kilovolts. These can kill. Build and test with care, use an isolating transformer, and discharge capacitors, including the CRT, before touching anything.

Using the designs

The designs are shared for personal, non-commercial home construction. Many are design drafts that haven't yet been built and tested; each project page shows its status and when it was last updated.